In the current business environment, effective project management is a key factor in the success of many enterprises. Therefore, today's IT organizations have become increasingly concerned about effective project management. Accordingly, IT organizations typically strive to achieve effective project management by implementing a full life cycle project management solution, wherein each project in an IT organization's portfolio is created and developed according to a comprehensive lifecycle process.
In general, to be considered a comprehensive project life cycle management solution that would enable an IT organization to realize the above goals and to increase project success rate, a software lifecycle management tool must, at a minimum, enable to perform the following five functions. First, the software lifecycle management tool must enable the IT organizations to perform executive monitoring and control of its projects. Second, the software lifecycle management tool must enable the IT organization to utilize current industry knowledge and best-practices in managing a project. Third, the software lifecycle management tool must enable the IT organizations to have a more detailed view capability to identify problems as early as feasible in each project's lifecycle. Fourth, the software lifecycle management tool must enable the IT organizations to effectively balance the lifecycle process. Finally, the software lifecycle management tool must enable the IT organization to continually strive to reduce overall time to progress through the project lifecycle process.
Compliance with internal project management systems and policies is rarely sufficient to meet the demands of the marketplace. In today's business environment, compliance with external standards, quality assurance programs and protocols, must often be demonstrated to customers, potential customers and entities that create and certify compliance with the standards. In some cases compliance with multiple standards and protocols, such as ISO, CMMI, six-sigma, and so on must be demonstrated in connection with a single project.
There are a number of software lifecycle management tools well known in the art that may be used by an IT organization for project lifecycle management. Generally prior art solutions do not provide technique that enables an IT organization to deliver projects on-time, within budget and a desired quality.